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Reports on taxation

How far should redistribution go? Who should pay for it and how? What is the proper role of the State and what is better left to private initiative? Should insolvent banks be bailed-out? Is it better to tax individuals when they consume or as soon as they earn their income? Should we rely on taxation to bent individuals’ behaviour towards a cleaner, safer life (sin taxes and fat taxes)? Every one has—or should have—an opinion on those important questions.

Miroslav Zajíchek, Pierre Garello, Markéta Grušáková, Karel Zeman

Environmental tax reforms have a history of almost two decades and were viewed as a way to the better world the “double-dividend” theory predicted. Much “political capital” has been invested in policies leading to environmental tax reforms on European and national levels from 1992 (the year of the first EU-wide energy and carbon tax proposal) till today. In this report, the authors compare shares of environmental taxes on GDP and overall tax revenues in the EU from 1995 till 2010 to identify the real impact of such efforts.

by Vesselina Spassova and Pierre Garello

This report offers a survey of EU energy taxation scheme and provides some insights on the possible outcomes of current EU policy in the energy domain. The authors are reviewing the existing legislation, namely the Council Directive 2003/96/EC and are analyzing the possible economic ground for harmonization of European energy taxes. They conclude that the virtues of energy taxation—including so-called double-dividend taxes—as a tool for energy policy are doubtful. A further development of energy taxation coupled with EU harmonization would most probably leads away from sound fiscal policy as well as from sound energy policy.

IREF is presenting for the third consecutive year a unique report on taxation in Europe. You can find here expert analysis of the fiscal policy in 22 european countries, the most recent data and forecast for future developments. Summary by Professor Pierre Garello.

Overview of Taxation in Europe

What is the current state of public finance in the EU countries? How did the various governments reacted to the crisis which developed in the second half of 2008? To what extent did it trigger a change in tax policy? IREF has asked scholars and experts from fifteen different EU countries to present and evaluate the 2008 tax policies of their respective countries.

Overview of Taxation in Europe

Introduction by Pierre Garello, Director of the Research Department of IREF

We already knew what the general situation and trends are in the EU. Namely, that the EU- 27 is still the region of the world with the highest fiscal burden, that situations differ greatly among EU member states (with new member countries having lower fiscal burden) and that some trends can be found in the evolution of the tax-mix with, for instance, a weak tendency to replace corporate income tax and labour tax with consumption tax. The reports presented here give life to those statistics. They reveal what were the priorities and constraints of the government in each country?

2006

Georgi Angelov

The system of taxation of corporate profits, introduced in 2000 in Estonia, is unique. Under this system the reinvested profit is not taxed, only the distributed profit is taxed. Thus, the taxation is shifted from the moment when profits are earned to the moment when profits are distributed to the owners of the capital. This is the reason why the Estonian system of corporate taxation became well known as “zero corporate profit on reinvested profit”.

Graham A. Brownlow

Abstract: It has been observed that while the respective theoretical merits of fiscal centralisation and decentralisation are debatable, it is even more difficult to empirically assess the degree of centralisation that exists in the real world. In particular, there is no index of the degree of comparative fiscal autonomy that exists. This report aims to contribute to creating such an index by considering the past and present structure of taxation in the economic and institutional development of the Republic of Ireland.

Maciej H.Grabowski

Abstract: The idea to compare the fiscal decentralisation and trends in this respect in the European countries is a core for the IREF project. This means that the strict rules of measurement of this complex issue, as fiscal decentralisation is, should be applied to all fiscal systems. Therefore I will follow the description how to generate the index of fiscal decentralisation invented and provided by the prof. Garello and Price . Nevertheless I will also describe and analyze problems which I have met when adopted this scheme into the Polish fiscal system.

Lars P. Feld

Abstract: In this article, German federalism is analyzed through its implications for public spending and for public revenue. The structure of government spending and taxation has evolved in the direction of greater centralisation. This tendency reveals itself (1) in the constitutional changes with regard to taxation, (2) the major territorial reforms and (3) in the increased influence of the federal state on the public spending of inferior levels of government. The evening out between authorities is too egalitarian and the effects on economic development are nefarious.